


Clutter

by Spacefiasco (ColourlessCharacter)



Category: Kane and Feels (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, but the character is the office, i'm so cool and unique, wonderland II spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 15:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20910032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColourlessCharacter/pseuds/Spacefiasco
Summary: There's a lot of clutter in Lucifer Kane's flat.





	Clutter

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Listen. I know there's an official image of some of the flat. I'm making it up as I go along okay.

The flat was both more and less cluttered before Feels moved in. There were fewer things to consist of the clutter, but the things that Kane owned seemed to scatter all across every corner of the flat. The surface area was about seventy five percent clutter: things placed onto bookshelves that most certainly were not books, charms and trinkets strewn about with no real correlation between their locations (to the untrained eye, at least. Kane knew better. Everything was perfectly placed and organised, mind you), mugs left unattended, half finished wards drawn onto the coffee table, he’d get around to that eventually, it wasn’t a pressing issue as of yet. It would be an issue if he didn’t get to it before June. Then  _ they _ might get back in.

Well, that was June Kane’s problem.

It’s not that the flat was messy or anything, but it definitely subscribed to the type of cleaning that was described with the word “chaos” after “organised”. The last client he had was quite disturbed by it, to be fair. He had explained that the hair on the table was his own, not some unsuspecting victim’s, and that it was nothing to be worried about. The design it was weaved into was very much a protection charm rather than a malicious one. He doesn’t keep the malicious ones in the flat, anyway, he told the client. The client was increasingly unnerved, for some reason.

Still, he got the case. A relatively simple one, at that. Done with plenty of free time to spare.

The thing about living by yourself is that you are living by yourself. You can find joy in the solitude of course, but it still wraps around you. Lucifer Kane’s flat is quiet, and he feels like he’s missing something. Not like how you miss your car keys after losing them, or how you miss a close friend when they move away, no. He misses something that is an integral part of him. He misses what could be his left arm, his leg, his heart. He misses something and he doesn’t know what, because he has not met it before. Not in this lifetime, perhaps, but he knows it, yet he doesn’t. Like large-scale Deja-vu it clings to him. It stifles him more than solitude ever could.

It bothers him. To lose time he organises the organised. He moves charms, he cleans mugs. He thinks he should get that antique poster framed. He vacuums. He doesn’t like the noise of the vacuum, so he quits that. He sweeps instead.

He is bored.

The flat is a two bedroom one but it’s just too large for just Kane, the energy of it feels wrong. It’s too small for just Kane. It is just _too_ for Kane. Spaces cannot be just _too_, they require an adjective that follows. Maybe life itself is just _too_. Too. The word doesn’t make sense to him anymore, he’s overthinking it.

Maybe he’ll go on a walk, get some food on the way home. Ignore the idea of _too_.

-

When Feels moved in, the flat was more and less cluttered.

See, with him came all of his stuff, too. And with that stuff also came the need to put that stuff somewhere. So the clutter was lessened by a solid day of cleaning, and then more things were put in the old clutter’s place. It was all just… clutter squared. See, there was less widespread clutter but more items that could _become_ clutter. So the potential clutter doubled and the actual clutter halved.

After a week, the actual clutter doubled again.

With Feels came a lot more mugs, and a lot more books, and a lot more paraphernalia that Kane didn’t really know what to do with. They bought an ikea chest of drawers to put all the unspeakables into, and Feels was remarkably unphased by the drawer marked ‘eyes’. Still. Charms and wards and the coffee table was just one big sigil (possibly nullified by the multiple rings left on the table by mugs) and overall, Kane felt that the aura of the house was just different. It was no longer _too_, rather, it was _just so_. Where before the space seemed to fold around Kane and make everything slightly wrong, too much of one thing, now, with a grounding presence in the space with him, everything is… gravitational. Before, the pressure was either too great or too thin, he was pushed down or he floated away, but now, now everything was the third porridge bowl. He wasn’t quite sure why.

Over a series of months he had gotten to know Feels, and he felt they had a good thing going on both for the clients and behind closed doors. The small one solves your problems. The big one makes tea. It was a kind of spooky good cop bad cop routine, and they fell into that routine effortlessly. It was a dance, or an orbit, and it was _just so_. They fell into another routine in the meantime, between cases. They read books, they watched films, they made charms incomprehensible to the average human, they ate Chinese food. They existed, and instead of it being _too_ of anything it was _just so_.

Equilibrium. The way things are supposed to be. Kane knew this. He wasn’t sure if Feels knew it too, felt it to the same extent that he did. He wasn’t as attuned, so to speak, or at least he wasn’t yet. Yet being a relative thing, as _yet_ was just as abstract as _too_ or _just so_. _Yet_. They had all the time in the world, so _yet_ was something that hadn’t happened yet but had also happened already. Feels didn’t know this. Kane knew as much as was necessary, which was also relative.

Feels was sitting on the couch, sewing something. The radio buzzed, and so did the drawer of unspeakables. Everything was _just so_.

-

When Kane left, the flat was just as cluttered as before. No more, no less. Feels didn’t disrupt anything. Dust gathered and the silence stretched. The cat was a constant presence, but it wasn’t a replacement for Kane. The constant feeling of something else in the air was almost a comfort, all the charms he left behind, but something was missing. Despite the magic, and the evidence of Kane’s life in the flat, something was lost. It was like opening the door and letting all the heat out. Everything is the same but the life is gone.

Feels feels wrong, now. Like a part of him was yanked along with Kane when he left. Hell, maybe a part of him was. Some kind of binding spell that laced them together, something more than present in our world. Another thing from the buffer. The other side. God.

God.

Feels decided to focus on the flat, because the flat wasn’t a source of what-ifs and relative things and concepts he could only see while smoking. The flat was a London house, two bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, a kitchen, a tiny storage closet. It would be here even if he wasn’t, or Kane wasn’t. Kane wasn’t anyway.

He kept taking clients. He tried his best with every case, because at least he, alone, could have a client and a case. He didn’t need to be two people for that to happen.

Was he two people? No. He was Brutus Feels. And _he_, he being someone _else_, someone far, _far_ away, was Lucifer Kane. Was he even far away? Who knew. Not Brutus. Brutus didn’t know.

There was a case about some kind of spirit feeding on grief. It was easily dispelled and bullied away with a paper ward. Another case about bad dreams. He offered advice for that one. He didn’t offer anything rolled in black paper. Cases, cases, something to keep the rent paid and the cat fed. Something to keep the food on the table.

He didn’t put the food on the coffee table. There was no room for the plate. He didn’t want to move anything, after all.

The radio played and Feels ate and the cat sat on his lap. There was noise and yet Feels didn’t hear any of it. The flat was empty, void, and so goddamn cold. The flat was full, bursting, and too damn warm. The flat, Feels realised, was _too_. No adjective required. It was _too_. Maybe this is what Kane meant when he said the flat was different before Feels arrived. Not different in a literal sense, but in a spiritual sense. In a relative one. _Too_.

A few weeks later a key turned in the door, and Brutus didn’t turn around, because suddenly, in a dizzying rush, everything was _just so_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my darling proofreader Talbot for both complimenting me and then yelling at me because I didn't know I could use rich text on ao3. I can be found on tumblr at space-fiasco and beeholding.


End file.
